3. New Directions

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3.1 Introduction

During the 1980s it became increasingly apparent
that placing reliance on environmental conventions, agreements and even
legislation to secure environmental protection could only be partially
effective. The Report of the UN's World Commission on Environment and
Development(5) published in 1987, highlighted the urgent need for a
fundamental shift in direction towards sustainable forms of economic
development. At the UNCED Conference in 1992, the countries of Europe
were among the 178 nations which accepted the requirements of Agenda
21, a detailed programme which elaborates the tangible requirements of
sustainable development. At about the same time, the European Union's
own blueprint was set out in the Fifth Environmental Action Programme,
Towards Sustainability.

In Europe, the collapse at the end of the 1980s of
the old regimes in central and eastern Europe gave added urgency to the
task of finding new ways of integrating environmental protection with
economic development. For decision makers in both the public and
private sectors, therefore, the 1990s have been a period for exploring
new directions. In such unfamiliar territory, never has the need been
greater for information and analysis of novel policy approaches and
instruments.

3.2 The UNCED Process

The United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development (UNCED), held in June 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, focused the
world's attention on the need to promote environmentally sustainable
development. The conference was attended by representatives of 178
nations, including a number of European Heads of State and/or
Government and the President of the European Commission. Five documents
were finalised and agreed at Rio. These are listed in Box 6.

Box 6: The UNCED Agreements

Agenda 21, which sets out a comprehensive programme of
action for achieving sustainable development. sector by sector. for the
next century. The Rio Declaration on Environment and
Development, which lists 27 principles of sustainable
management.A Statement of Principles for the Sustainable Management and Use of
Forests.The Framework Convention on Climate Change, which aims to
reduce emissions op greenhouse gases.The convention on Biodiversity, which aims to conserve
biological diversity, promote sustainable management and the equitable
sharing, of genetic resources.

Securing the commitment in principle of most of the
countries of the world to a new approach to the issues of environment
and development was an undoubted achievement. However, the UNCED
agreements were inevitably the product of political compromises and in
many cases reflect the lowest common denominator at which agreement
could be secured. The Framework Convention on Climate Change, for
example, contains no binding timetable for reducing C02 emissions.
Instead stabilisation at 1990 levels by the year 2000 is stated merely
as a desirable aim. Similarly, during the course of the conference the
Convention on Biological Diversity was criticised by the EU for not
going far enough.

Potentially the most significant of the UNCED
achievements was the 800-page Agenda 21, possibly the most
complex document ever negotiated at an international conference. It
contains four sections, forty chapters, 115 programmes, and
approximately 2,500 actions to be implemented by governments at the
national, regional and global levels. Agenda 21 represents only the
beginning rather than the end of a process, and a number of firm
targets were omitted during pre-conference negotiations. Most
significantly, the industrialised nations (including the EU) failed to
agree to increase their official development aid to 0.7 per cent of
their GNP by the year 2000.

Crucially, the value of the Agenda 21 commitments
depends on the success of the follow-up process. UNCED established the
UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), with
responsibility for examining the progress of implementation of Agenda
21 at all levels, together with those activities related to the
integration of environmental and developmental goals.

National strategies or action plans are the key to
the implementation of Agenda 21. National sustainability plans are
required which address future intended action for achieving
sustainability, and for integrating the commitments made at the summit
into general policy and programmes. The fifth Environmental Action
Programme represents an important point of departure for the
implementation of Agenda 21 in the EU.

In the first year following UNCED, however, only
approximately 50 national reports were received by the CSD, from more
than 170 countries which took part. The quality and scope of these
reports varies greatly, and there is a clear need for guidance based on
a review of best practice on how to draw up and implement such
plans.

The CSD is to prepare an overview of progress in
implementing Agenda 21 for presentation at its session in 1997.

3.3 Towards sustainability in the EU

The fifth Environmental Action Programme

Just three months before the countries of Europe
accepted the commitments in Agenda 21, the European Commission
published its own blueprint for achieving sustainability in the EU. In
so doing it set a radically different course for the Community's
environmental policy.

This was followed in 1993 by the ratification of
the Maastricht Treaty. The new Treaty for the first time makes
'sustainable growth respecting the environment' a key objective for
Community activity. It also aims for a high level of environmental
protection, implementation of the precautionary principle, and the
integration of environmental considerations into all relevant Community
policies.

The new approach contained in the fifth programme
has a number of dimensions:

The principal focus is the agents and
activities which cause pollution and the depletion of natural resources
in the first place, rather than the problems after they have
emerged;

Environmental considerations need to be
integrated into five key economic sectors with significant effects on
the environment:

industry

agriculture

energy

transport

tourism

Changes in society's patterns of behaviour
are to be achieved in a spirit of shared responsibility among key
actors, including central and local government, public and private
enterprise, and the general public (as both individual citizens and
consumers);

The range of policy instruments applied to
the solution of environmental problems should be broadened considerably
beyond 'command and control' legislation. Examples of new policy
instruments are described in Box 7.

Box 7: New Policy Instruments

Economic instruments — to sensitise producers and consumers
to the responsible use of natural resources and the avoidance of
pollution and waste. Economic instruments can include charges and
levies, tax incentives and state aids. The establishment of a system of
legal liability for damage to the environment can also provide a clear
economic incentive for better environmental management and control. In
addition, EU financial support mechanisms such as the Structural Funds
and the LIFE financial instrument also have a significant role;
Voluntary agreements and self regulation by industry,
including industry-wide pollution reduction targets; eco-audit and
eco-labelling schemes; and the application of environmental product
standards;

Improved information and education to enable the public, in
a spirit of shared responsibility, to make more informed choices.

Further elaboration of what a move towards
sustainable development in the EU would entail was contained in the
Commission's White Paper Growth, Competitiveness and
Employment published in December 1993.(6) The Commission argues
that the twin challenges currently facing the Community of
environmental pollution and high unemployment are the result of a
fundamental inefficiency in the economic system in which there is an
over-use of natural and environmental resources combined with an
under-use of the quality and quantity of the labour force. A new
economic development model is required in which inter alia the
burden of taxation is shifted from employment towards resource use in
order to secure both jobs and environmental protection. In this way,
the currently negative relationship between economic prosperity and
environmental quality can be reversed.

A broader mix of instruments

Economic instruments are just one of a number of
policy tools that the fifth Action Programme argues are necessary to
move towards sustainability. Environmental legislation, however., will
continue to be necessary for setting fundamental levels of protection,
or for establishing the common standards necessary to preserve the
integrity of the internal market. But reliance on legislation alone has
its limitations:

legislation by its nature tends to focus on
pollution from readily identifiable sources such as manufacturing
industry or products, rather than on more diffuse sources or
activities;

much legislation adopts an 'end-of-pipe'
rather than a preventative approach to pollution control. For example,
laws limiting the level of nitrates in drinking water may be necessary
only because the cause of the problem - which may be the excessive
application of fertilisers by farmers - has not been properly
tackled:

the process of developing new legislation
may be too cumbersome and time-consuming. For example, it would be
impossible to develop detailed rules governing the use of all 100,000
chemicals currently used in manufacturing industry;

the use of legislation can reflect a
'top-down' approach to environmental protection in which responsibility
for initiating action may be perceived to belong to governments alone.
The scale of current environmental problems is such that responsibility
for tackling them must be shared between different actors.

The need for information and analysis

With the new direction set by fifth Action
Programme, information and analysis presented in an accessible and
efficient form becomes even more an essential underpinning of the EU's
environmental policy.

Most fundamentally, Europe's
Environment has highlighted the gaps and limitations in available
data, and the need for better standardisation of information retrieval,
collation and interpretation.

There is an urgent need to review and distil
experience from around the world of how governments are seeking to
develop and implement national sustainability plans. Evidence from such
countries as Canada, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden suggests that
as well as an overarching plan itself, also required are Action Plans
for particular sectors and/or objectives; annual performance reviews by
sectoral Government Ministries; the development of new mechanisms to
integrate environmental concerns across the work of government; and the
application of new regulatory, economic and judicial
instruments.

The effective use of new policy instruments
requires the availability of information on their application and
effectiveness.

Shared responsibility for environmental
protection requires all key 'players' to be informed on:

the true nature of the environmental
challenges and risks they face;

the nature and impact of current and
potential actions by public authorities to tackle them;

what their own contribution might be as
producers, consumers and decision-makers.

3.4 The 'Environment for Europe'
process

New mechanisms for pan-European co-operation

The collapse at the end of the 1980s of the old
regimes in central and eastern Europe revealed for the first time the
true extent of what can only be described as an environmental disaster.
As the curtain lifted, the picture that emerged showed

locally very high levels of air and water
pollution giving rise to widespread respiratory diseases, allergies,
infant mortalities and congenital defects

an average life expectancy many years below
that in western Europe

extensive damage to forests and other
ecosystems caused by acid emission,,, from heavy industry and a
generally inefficient pattern of energy use.

Moreover, the introduction of market economies and
the prospect of future rapid economic growth threatened to make the
situation even worse.

It was against this background that in June 1991
the 'Environment for Europe' process was formally launched at Dobris
Castle in Czechoslovakia. To some extent the ground had already been
prepared during the late 1980s by a number of all-European meetings
organised by the UN-ECE in the framework of the CSCE process, and in
1990 by the Norwegian Government as a regional follow-up to the World
Commission on Environment Development. The Dobris Castle conference
was, however, more ambitious. This first all-European conference of
Environment Ministers - attended by ministers from all European
countries (including the then Soviet Union) and the European
Commission's Environment Commissioner - issued a call for a new
Environmental Programme for Europe - a framework for the better
co-ordination of national and international environmental efforts,
setting priorities for restoring existing environmental damage and the
prevention of future problems.

Since then, an on-going series of activities by
European and international organisations and many individual countries
has kept up the momentum. A further 'Environment for Europe'
ministerial conference was held in Lucerne in April 1993 and a third is
planned for October 1995 in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Specifically, the Dobris Castle conference called
for

the publication of a Report on the State
of the Environment in Europe. This will be published imminently by
the European Environment Agency as the 600-page Europe's
Environment;

the development of a short-term
Environmental Action Programme for Central and Eastern
Europe;

a longer-term Environmental Programme
for Europe.

The Environmental Action Programme for Central and
Eastern Europe

The Environmental Action Programme for Central and
Eastern Europe (EAP) was the principal document to he discussed and
endorsed at the Lucerne Conference.

The EAP is not a binding document - rather it
provides a framework for policy makers and financial institutions and
investors as they approach the enormous task of tackling environmental
problems in the CEE countries. As such, it now forms the basis of a
partnership between the CEE and western European countries, in which
the former undertake essential policy and institutional reforms, while
the latter offer technical assistance and financial support for high
priority projects.

The sheer scale of the environmental problems
facing the countries in transition is fear larger than the local or
international resources available to tackle them. The EAP, therefore,
sets out guidelines for establishing essential priorities. It
focuses on those actions and measures that offer high benefits for
relatively low cost.

Three types of action are outlined in detail:

Immediate expenditures in areas where the
costs of existing environmental damage are high - such as immediate
threats to human health and the prevention of irreversible, long-term
damage to ecosystems. Proposed expenditure priorities are listed in Box
8.

policy reforms, many of which aim to
integrate environmental considerations into the process of economic
reconstruction;

Institutional capacity building.

Box 8: Expenditure priorities identified by
the EAP

Tackling immediate threats to health through, for example, improved
dust controls for non-ferrous smelters and steel plants, as well as the
replacement of coal with gas in district heating plants and households
in areas of poor air quality; Action on specific problems in individual
countries, such as inadequate waste water treatment facilities that
threaten valuable coastal, tourist and ecological resources;

Government support for private sector environmental investments to
reduce harmful emissions, such as saline discharges by mines, and the
toxic emissions of pulp, textile and chemical plants;

Low-cost preventive measures that will save far greater expenditure
in the future. Such measures include the phasing out of leaded gasoline
and reducing vehicle emissions; more research on ecosystems; and the
development of systems to collect, interpret and disseminate
environmental data.

The central message of the EAP is that getting the
policy and institutional framework right is probably more important
than any other type of environmental action. Particular emphasis is
placed on the use of economic instruments, although the optimum 'mix'
of policy instruments will differ according to the nature of the
problem. The clarification of environmental liability and the
introduction of integrated, rather than single-medium, approaches to
pollution control, are also stressed.

widening access to environmental
information, and increasing public awareness and commitment to
environmental protection.

What the practical effect of EAP will be depends
essentially on the political will of those who commissioned and
endorsed it, and on the range and quality of the technical support
available to the CEE countries. All the countries represented at the
Lucerne Conference undertook to review the implementation of the EAP,
inter alia, through environmental performance reviews.

At a European level, responsibility for
facilitating the implementation of the EAP has been allocated to two
bodies established by the Lucerne Conference:

a Task Force, the secretariat of which is
provided by the OECD;

a Project Preparation Committee, to improve
co-ordination among donors in relation to environmental investments in
the countries of CEE.

Environmental Programme for Europe

Work continues on the longer-term Environmental
Programme for Europe (EPE), spearheaded by a Working Group representing
the UN-ECE, the European Commission, UNEP and other international
organisations and financial institutions. The EPE - which, like the
Environmental Action Programme for Central and Eastern Europe, will be
a non-binding framework document - may be ready for adoption at the
Sofia conference in October 1995. In addition to key strategic issues
emerging from Europe's Environment, the EPE is expected to
focus on the following objectives, many of which were identified in the
Ministerial Declaration issued following the Lucerne Conference:

improved co-operation in the development and
application of environmentally-sound technologies;

the phasing out of unsafe nuclear
installations and intensified action to develop energy efficiency
programmes and renewable sources of energy;

the development of integrated pollution
prevention and control;

wider use of economic and fiscal
instruments, and co-ordinated moves to apply them at an international
level to offset competitive disadvantages;

the development of non-compliance regimes
for international legal instruments;

strengthened systems for monitoring
compliance with and securing the enforcement of environmental law and
policy;

the development of a framework for' burden
sharing' to offer CEE countries financial support for the application
of international environmental agreements;

better education and training in
environmental issues and policy;

the encouragement of wider public
participation.

The way forward

It is too early to reach a definitive conclusion on
the effectiveness of the 'Environment for Europe' process. It is an
achievement in itself regularly to bring together so many Environment
Ministers with a commitment to co-operate over the long-term, right
across the continent. Moreover the process can keep issues like the use
of economic instruments and burden sharing at the top of Europe's
agenda when the EU has so far had limited success in taking them
forward.

However, in many of the participating countries the
Environment for Europe process lacks political commitment, and this
inevitably affects their willingness to implement the actions proposed.
Meanwhile, there is almost total ignorance among parliamentarians, NG0s
and the general public of what is being discussed and agreed within
this unfamiliar framework. Once again, the widespread availability of
better information and analysis on the issues at stake and the options
for tackling them is needed to keep up the momentum.

3.5 National and sectoral initiatives

Shared responsibility for environmental protection
requires action to be taken at all levels of government - European,
national and local - and through voluntary initiatives by industry,
non-governmental organisations and individuals. Across Europe there are
many examples of such initiatives, just a few of which are described
below. The collection and dissemination of information on actions such
as these, and the identification of good practice, can make an
important contribution in the movement towards sustainability.

Chemical Industry's Responsible Care Programme

Since 1984 a growing number of national chemical
industry associations have introduced voluntary Responsible
Care programmes to demonstrate managerial commitment to
environmental protection and safety. The UK's Chemical Industries
Association (CIA), for example, makes adherence to the Responsible Care
Programme a condition of membership. Members sign an undertaking
pledging to make health. safety and environmental performance integral
to their overall business policy.

In both the Netherlands and the UK, the initiative
has been taken to add substance to that commitment by publishing
quantitative data on members' environmental performance. In the UK six
indicators are used f6r measuring industrial performance including
spending on environmental protection, releases to the environment.
distribution incidents and public complaints.

Environmental Covenants in the Netherlands

In the Netherlands the integration of the
environment with industry has been assisted by the use of covenants or
agreements. By signing a declaration of intent industrial sectors
voluntarily commit themselves to implementing a set of environmental
objectives. Over the last decade 18 covenants have been signed relating
to the environmental properties of products; 8 relating to process
emissions; and 26 relating to energy conservation. A covenant is
presently being drafted with the association of electricity producers,
designed to stabilise C02 emissions attributable to the sector at 1990
levels, by 2010 at the latest.

As a further demonstration of 'shared
responsibility', the development and implementation of environmental
measures in the Netherlands is being devolved from government to the
major polluters. For example, electricity distributors have taken the
initiative and established emission reduction targets for C02, SO2 and
N0x, with stricter targets than those set by the Government.

Transnational Initiative for End-of-Life Cars

European car manufacturers have been developing
facilities to deal with scrapped cars for several years. The first
disassembly plant was opened in Germany in 1990 by Volkswagen and
various German initiatives have since been in the pipeline. However,
the millions of scrapped cars that arise annually cannot be handled
adequately by one country or one manufacturer alone. An initiative
which is transnational and brings together all manufacturers has been
launched by the European Commission as part of its Priority Waste
Streams Programme. The aim of the programme is to bring together
government, industry and environmental interests so that a consensus
may be reached on future action.

A transnational car recycling strategy has been
drawn up by a project group aimed in the short-term at the
re-utilisation of materials, although emphasis will shift more to the
development of 'recyclable' vehicles in the longer-term. Without
providing subsidies or infringing on competition, the strategy targets
a 95% recovery rate for vehicle materials by the year 2015.

Economic Instruments in Norway

The application of economic instruments for
environmental purposes has risen high on the policy agendas of most
OECD countries. Norway is one of the most advanced countries in Europe
in translating this commitment into concrete action. Eco-taxes have
been introduced on sulphur content of oil, C02 emissions, noise at
airports, fertilisers and pesticides, and differentiated taxes applied
to leaded and unleaded gasoline.

In 1989, the Norwegian Government established the
Green Tax Commission, largely consisting of ministers from various
sectors. The Commission highlighted the need to develop a more
environmentally-sound economic system. As a follow-up, an evaluation is
now being carried out to establish more cost-effective economic
instruments which might replace administrative policy instruments in
the future.

Norway has been fortunate to have had a high level
of integration between Government Ministries taking decisions on fiscal
and environmental issues. It has the added advantage of having a
population accustomed to high levels of excise duties, and strongly in
favour of environmental protection measures.

Environmental Employment Schemes in France

The benefits of aligning employment and
environmental objectives are great and the French Government has taken
a lead in using this strategy to create jobs without increasing
environmental costs. A budget of 100 million FF for 1994, administered
by the Regional Directorates for the Environment, is intended for
environmental projects, with the aim of creating 35,000 jobs for the
environment by the end of 1995. The scheme will be coordinated by
environmental protection groups, involving local and regional
participation.

A second measure in France involves redirecting
military service conscripts towards community service as "environmental
volunteers" for a duration of 10 months, thereby increasing the total
value of their contribution to the community. The men are placed at the
service of public authorities and given tasks such as the protection
and management of natural areas, monitoring, maintenance duties, and
informing the public.

Environment Agencies in Spain

A useful tool has been developed in Spain to
integrate environmental concerns into other policy sectors at regional
level. Agenias de Media Ambiente (AMA) or Environment
Agencies, currently operate in four of Spain's Autonomous Regions. They
bring together a number of different sectoral ministries to develop
environmental policy, thus spreading the 'ownership' of environmental
protection measures and facilitating their implementation. Apart from
offering a forum for the development of environmental measures, AMAs
are especially useful in countries where environmental concerns do not
rate highly on the political agenda, and where no separate Environment
Ministry exists.